Wayne Lawrence
Kakuma (Turkana County), Kenya
Sport for Social Cohesion
Located in north-western Kenya, on the outskirts of Kakuma town, Kakuma Refugee Camp was established in 1992 upon the arrival of thousands of children who were displaced or orphaned during the Second Sudanese Civil War, a group also known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan”. Kakuma Camp today houses refugees and asylum seekers from a total of 19 countries, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda. As of September 2019, Kakuma Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement had a total population of 191,500. Young people between the ages of 15 to 35 make up at least 40 per cent of the camp population.
UNHCR and the IOC have partnered since the early 1990s to support refugees through sport. The IOC founded the Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF) in 2017 in an ongoing commitment to leverage sport for the protection and support of displaced people across the globe. At Kakuma Camp, the partnership between UNHCR and the IOC has ensured access to safe spaces dedicated to sports and arts-based activities for thousands of refugee children from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds who face challenges related to past traumas and stress.
Biography
(b.1974) Wayne Lawrence is a St Kitts-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work seeks to illuminate the complexities of human experience, navigating ideas of community, purpose and man’s relationship to our natural and adopted environments.
Wayne's photographs have been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, The FLAG Art Foundation, Amerika Haus (Munich), the Open Society Institute, and the African American Museum of Philadelphia among other galleries.
His work has appeared on the covers of National Geographic and TIME and has been published by National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, AARP, TIME, Rolling Stone, Variety, Men’s Journal, Mother Jones, Mare, COLORS, and Newsweek.
His first monograph, Orchard Beach: The Bronx Riviera, was released by Prestel Publishing in October 2013, with accompanying exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of Art and The FLAG Art Foundation.
Wayne is currently at work on his second book, Black Blood, an exploration of J’ouvert carnival traditions in the Eastern Caribbean.